PowerLite Home Cinema 5030UB

A great little video on why a screen is not always necessarily needed (going from a fairy expensive screen to just the wall) for an amazing image. https://youtu.be/Xaj-xeYFBfo?si=tdUZroN64jRzZ7Sl A darker color will absolutely make a difference for your light spillage...if you want any type of home theater experience with contrast that is quite important. I would even go as far as a carpet for in front of the screen to further reduce that light spillage. https://a.co/d/01CPuaGu If you do not want to paint your walls (which again is not for everyone) then another solution for around the screen and ceiling is this felt which almost completely eliminated all spillage... https://a.co/d/007FwbcR As far as projectors go the 'lifestyle' projectors are absolutely a fantastic product with exceptional image, brightness and clarity. I owned many Epson products including their UB line 5030UB, 5040UB and 5050UB and I have not gone back to those for a reason. JMGO has their upcoming line in the N3 Ultimate that will have optical zoom, optical lens shift and Dolby Vision making it VERY hard to beat.

I started with a 5030ub and upgraded to a 6050ub for 4K and HDR support. I was immediately disappointed in the poor static tone mapping, and it felt like a downgrade from coming from a solid SDR projector before hand. I invested in building my own video processor for tone mapping using MadVR open source and video processor.org with a HDMI capture card and GPU. This is not for the faint of heart to setup, tune and calibrate, but the payoff is well worth it. I have a dedicated light treated home theater that benefits from high contrast. I have a 180" screen, and the 6050ub lights it up very well while achieving excellent contrast and shadow detail. I wouldn't say that natively without a video processor it is worth it at this point in time since projectors native tone mapping has come so far. I also added an HDFury inline which adds support for Dolby Vision using an HDR flag hack and is a really nice upgrade which means I have all the functionality of newer models with the excellent color, lens and contrast ratio. I am on my second bulb, which cost under $100. I echo others that say 3D is amazing and I agree, hands down destroys anything else I have ever seen. I would love love to side by side my setup with a Valerion Max to see how it compares, but I doubt it will given my configuration. Obviously technology moved forward and everything improves over time, but newer isn't always better.

Sounds like a custom CinemaScope screen with an aspect ratio around 2.66:1. I made a custom screen with an aspect of 2.35:1 and use a regular 16:9 projector on it, I just choose to crop the projector's image to only use the center. This is much like how a 16:9 TV shows horizontal black bars at the top and bottom during a widescreen movie, my projector always shows these bars so the image fits the wide screen. If you're looking into this hobby, there are a ton of variables that affect what projector is best for you. First of all, what is your budget? Are you willing to buy used? Is there a ceiling fixture that dictates how far the projector will sit from the screen, or do you know that distance? When you mention wanting to use the screen with the lights on, will that be your primary way of using it, or will you generally turn the lights off and only occasionally use it with ambient light? The level of ambient light in the room will directly control how good your image looks, so in a finished basement with presumably no or few windows I'd highly recommend using the projector with as many lights off as possible. As others have mentioned, the easiest way to do multiple format sizes on a screen like yours is to use a projector with a motorized zoom and lens memory, where you can set multiple predefined zoom positions to fit taller content like 16:9 TV to the screen height, leaving some of the screen unused on either side. These units tend to be $$$$, so I wouldn't necessarily expect that to be in your price range if you're just getting started and don't want to spend thousands of dollars.

Sure, I think you can do pretty well with that budget. What is the main media you plan on watching, movies, sports, TV shows? Your screen is more or less sized to be optimal for movies, which is also what I did. Probably any projector in your budget will not have advanced features like the lens memory I mentioned or the ability to blank the top and bottom bars, so instead you will control the projected aspect ratio by what video signal you feed it. If you use something like a Blu ray player, when you watch a movie that is widescreen, your projector will protect the 16:9 image just like a TV, but you won't really see the black bars because you'll zoom the lens to fit the actual image to the top and bottom of your white screen manually. Then if you want to watch a TV show or something that isn't the extra wide format, you'll want to zoom in, making the whole projected image smaller so the 16:9 content fits top to bottom on the screen. For all of this I'd recommend a projector with at least 1.5x zoom. Alternatively, you could feed your projector video signal from a home theater PC. That is what I do, and I can set the output resolution of my graphics card to the ratio of my 2.35:1 screen. This is definitely more involved in setup, but means that I have more control over the image and don't have to mess with Zoom as much. I have my biases about projectors, but the easiest units to place in a room are those with a feature called lens shift. This is much better than using keystone, which distorts the image and lowers the resolution. Instead, lens shift lets you place the projector parallel to the screen and move the projection lenses at the front to shift the image around on your wall without keystone. I personally chose a used Epson 5030UB because it has plenty of zoom, good color, and a huge range of lens shift. The biggest drawback is resolution (it's only 1080p), but if you don't sit too close that doesn't distract me. There's a lot to get right for a proper projector setup, but it sounds like you have a nice screen that would make the effort worth it! For reference, the website projectorcentral.com makes it easy to compare projectors, and they have a nice interactive throw calculator that can help you size the zoom and throw distance you need!

Years and years ago - like 8 at this point - I bought a  Epson 5030ub for $300cad. It was a fantastic deal. Still on same bulb, still runs perfectly. Its quiet, inky blacks, but in no way portable. If you are looking to set up a home theater, something like this would be perfect. You are not getting 4k for $300

Thanks for replying. I was just curious because currently I have an epson 5030ub that I believe is 2400 lumens. I have it in my living room with an ALR screen and while the picture is great it definitely struggles with ambient light still since it’s in the living room with lighting everywhere. I was thinking of doing some shopping around for something else with more lumens. I also wanted to add, how do you feel about short throw projectors? I see an epson one at 2200$ and 3600 lumens.